Crafting, traveling and everything in between.

National Museum of American History Museum, D.C.

The National Museum of American History is huge! We didn’t get to see everything that was there, including a large exhibit on the Civil Rights Movement. We only got to see a portion of it and many others because we only had about an hour and half to explore everything.

The most amazing and emotional artifact we saw was the Star-Spangled Banner. Yes, the actual flag Francis Scott Key saw and wrote about during the War of 1812. It was kept in a dark room, behind a glass. In the background, various renditions of the “Star Spangled Banner” played, including Jimi Hendrix’s famous version.

We also saw an exhibit that featured gowns worn by several First Ladies. From inaugural gowns to campaign outfits, there were dresses to represent most of the former ladies. Chris was sweet and patient to let me spend a lot of time there browsing the different fabrics and styles and admiring how fashion has changed over the years.

We also spent a very long time in the exhibit about the evolution of the food culture in the U.S. It included a complete kitchen donated by Julie Child. The exhibit had a video that played snippets of Child’s cooking show on a loop. I sat through a couple before Chris poked me to move it along.

The transportation exhibit is ginormous. Chris said the exhibit was sprawling. I’m sure we didn’t finish seeing it all, though it was hard to tell. There seemed to be room after room of transportation artifacts. There were boats, school buses, trolleys, classic cars and trains.

There was an exhibit about Little Golden Books. It displayed many of the books published over the years. It was fun picking out the books I remembered reading, such as the “The Poky Little Puppy.”

I would definitely make the history museum a priority to revisit in the future. There was so much to see and we didn’t even get to peek into several of the exhibits, such as a maritime exhibit and history of Americans in war.